The same word is applied to office-holders whose ideologies are poles apart because populism in the United States is not a philosophical creed, like liberalism or conservatism. It is a mode of persuasion — by which left and right compete in the never-ending battle to define the virtuous many and the immoral few.

Populists on both sides view ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class or occupation; see their elite opponents — ‚Äúthe establishment‚ÄĚ — as self-serving and undemocratic, and seek to mobilize the former against the latter. In a nation where the people are supposed to rule, the evolving contest to fill those vague yet emotionally powerful terms with meaning helps explain who gets to govern the nation and for what ends.

The first Populism — with a capital P — was the name of a radical third party. Near the end of the 19th century, a mass movement largely composed of small farmers and wage-earners from the rural South and West organized the People‚Äôs or Populist Party. The group sought to challenge the ‚Äúplutocrats,‚ÄĚ who were to blame for corrupting politics and impoverishing the masses. The original Populists thought the only virtuous citizens were ‚Äúproducers‚ÄĚ — those who worked hard, usually with their hands, for the common good.

‚ÄúWealth belongs to him who creates it,‚ÄĚ intoned Ignatius Donnelly, one leader of the new party. Putting the same principle in harsher, biblical terms, Donnelly quoted St. Paul: ‚ÄúIf any will not work neither shall he eat.‚ÄĚ

During the Cold War, however, populism began to slip its liberal moorings. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his fellow Red hunters accused rich Hollywood screenwriters and Ivy League-educated State Department officials of cozying up to, even spying for, the Communist enemy. This New Right‚Äôs conspiratorial, anti-elitist rhetoric, argued such prominent intellectuals as the historian Richard Hofstadter and the sociologist Daniel Bell, resembled that of the People‚Äôs Party — if aimed at completely different targets.

Mainstream journalists, who thought as little of bygone agrarian rebels as they did of McCarthy‚Äôs demagoguery, echoed the intellectuals‚Äô critique. So was born the notion that conservatives could talk populism as naturally as their opponents on the left.

Then, the multiple crises which rocked the nation in the 1960s and ‚Äė70s spawned populisms from all points on the ideological spectrum. Buffeted by racial conflict, a losing war in Vietnam and a long economic downturn, Americans grew mistrustful of nearly every kind of authority. Their sour mood boosted Ralph Nader‚Äôs campaign against unsafe cars produced by General Motors, Alabama Governor George Wallace‚Äôs assaults on ‚Äúpointy-headed bureaucrats‚ÄĚ and school busing, and Jerry Falwell‚Äôs crusade against the ‚Äúsecular humanist‚ÄĚ elite. It also helped lift former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a one-time peanut farmer who promised ‚Äúa government as good as its people,‚ÄĚ into the White House in 1976.

Decades later, what the media once treated as novel has become an unreflective habit. When nearly anyone who rails against ‚Äúthe establishment‚ÄĚ — political, economic, cultural — in the name of ‚Äúthe people‚ÄĚ gets labeled a populist, the term risks becoming more a lazy tic than a useful trope.

For Warren, what characterizes the common folk are their economic hopes and woes. They work hard to earn enough money to buy a nice house, send their children to college and enjoy a secure retirement. But Wall Street gambles with their mortgages, and employers refuse to raise their pay — as the Dow Jones Average soars. So she champions the right of labor to organize and argues for lower interest rates on student loans and stricter rules on how banks can invest other people‚Äôs money.

The popularity of populist talk is unlikely to wane anytime soon. It‚Äôs been essential to political conflict in the United States for most of the nation‚Äôs history. Populism‚Äôs ideologically promiscuous nature practically insures that, for some future group of partisans, yesterday‚Äôs tribunes of the ‚Äúplain people‚ÄĚ will become tomorrow‚Äôs immoral establishment.

That‚Äôs a good thing too. At root, populism is the language of people who engage in politics to protect and advance the imperishable ideals of the American republic which they believe — often with good reason — that the powerful and the privileged have betrayed.

As the great historian C. Vann Woodward wrote almost 60 years ago, ‚ÄúOne must expect and even hope that there will be future upheavals to shock the seats of power and privilege and furnish the periodic therapy that seems necessary to the health of our democracy.‚ÄĚ

Author Profile

Michael Kazin‚Äôs most recent book is "American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation." His other books include "The Populist Persuasion: An American History" and "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan." He is editor of Dissent [www.dissentmagazine.org] and teaches history at Georgetown University.